WoW Classic seeks to recreate the "vanilla WoW" experience—that is, WoW as it existed before a series of seven game-altering major expansion packs from 2007's The Burning Crusade to 2018's Battle for Azeroth. To achieve this, Blizzard has rebuilt the game based on archived data from back in 2005 and 2006 (patch 1.12 is the goalpost—the current game is on patch 8.1.5). The company has committed to meticulously presenting the experience exactly as it was back then—warts and all—with only a small number of unavoidable or critical changes.

The World of Warcraft is going back to its roots with WoW Classic. Giving players the chance to return to the game as it was around the time of its launch, WoW Classic is set to launch worldwide on August 27. However, ahead of its imminent release, the team at Blizzard are offering a closed beta test for WoW Classic, and we’ve got all the details players need to jump in on the action.

The upcoming stress test will have some limitations. If you’re accepted for the test, you’ll see the launcher offer you a new drop down on the World of Warcraft section marked as “Beta & Stress Test: WoW Classic” which will allow you to download the client in advance of Wednesday’s test, but if you’re not already in the beta you won’t be able to log in until May 22 from 4 to 6 PM Pacific time. If you’re already in the beta, be aware that you won’t be able to log onto the beta realms either, as those will be down while the new stress test realm is up. The purpose is to get as many players as possible into those starting zones to test for stability — so there are some limitations.
WoW Classic seeks to recreate the "vanilla WoW" experience—that is, WoW as it existed before a series of seven game-altering major expansion packs from 2007's The Burning Crusade to 2018's Battle for Azeroth. To achieve this, Blizzard has rebuilt the game based on archived data from back in 2005 and 2006 (patch 1.12 is the goalpost—the current game is on patch 8.1.5). The company has committed to meticulously presenting the experience exactly as it was back then—warts and all—with only a small number of unavoidable or critical changes.

Some players have been surprised by these apparent flaws—even players who have been eagerly awaiting WoW Classic's release based on fond memories of vanilla WoW. In truth, it has been so long since WoW first released, players' memories may not always be accurate. Some details might be fresh, but others might be lost in time, and it's those lost details that could surprise players revisiting the original experience in WoW Classic.

Within the context of Classic, the method most frequently proposed is to re-tune bosses to make them harder. Rather than copying the numbers, re-create the relative difficulty. Kind of like, when you first start working out, you use small weights. When you get stronger, you lift bigger weights. The WoW community is more knowledgeable, more experienced, has better hardware, etc. We're "stronger." So give us tougher bosses. There are a lot of forms that could take. Bosses were constantly re-tuned during vanilla anyway, so if Ragnaros does 10% more damage or something, is that really a problem? I don't think it is. What about resistance gear? back in the day, collecting resist gear was a thing people did. But the numbers and strategies are so well known today that only the tank really needs it anymore. Bosses could be re-tuned with more resistible elemental damage so that's important for entire raids to gear appropriately. That would be entirely keeping with the spirit of vanilla even if the actually numbers sitting in a database somewhere were different than they were ~13 years ago. If you want to go a little farther, a few people have proposed adding new abilities to old bosses, adjusting their timing, etc. One player said in a comment posted in response to the list, “Yeah people don’t realize the sheer enormity of game system evolution WoW has gone through since release. I’m not the biggest fan of BoA by any stretch, but I’ve played since closed beta vanilla, and I doubt I’ll be going back to classic. Leveling was painful. Experiencing these old systems once was enough.”

If you’re eager to claim your character name in WoW Classic, take note: we’ll be opening character creation on Tuesday, August 13.** Players with an active subscription or game time on their account will be able to create up to three characters per World of Warcraft account. We’ll have more information on realm names closer to launch, but rest assured—you’ll have plenty of time to figure out your plans for realm domination!

Why was this downvoted? The swing analogy is horrible. There’s nothing physical that’s going to change when u play the game the exact same way as 04 05 06. The difference is u know what’s going on as opposed to not knowing where anything is. A good analogy would be playing Pokémon red again after beating the elite 4. The game itself won’t be any worse, it just will be easier and maybe less enjoyable if all you enjoyed is the aspect of not knowing where to go. But this is why pvp servers are magical, because each time you level a character, your leveling experience is different based on the encounters that happen while questing. In 05 U may have breezed through stv, but in classic u may spend an hour on a single quest solely because of the competition between factions on that particular quest.

A new quest will pop up once your first pet reaches level 3. It will send you to either Audrey Burnhep in Stormwind or Varzok in Orgrimmar. These trainers will offer a quest chain to battle specific Pet Tamer NPCs on each continent. Defeating each of these NPCs will reward a nice chunk of experience for your pets, as well a Sack of Pet Supplies (which has the chance to drop the Porcupette companion, among the always-useful pet bandages).
There are two parts of the quest chain for each continent. The first part involves defeating numerous Master Pet Tamers, and the second requires you to triumph over the Grand Master Tamer. After you've bested the Grand Master Tamer, dailies from each Tamer will unlock for that continent. All the dailies continue to reward experience for your companions, however only the Grand Master daily quest will reward the Sack of Pet Supplies.
Here comes the first stress test for the Classic beta, and Blizzard will be inviting a lot more people this time around. It's taking place this Wednesday, May 22nd and will last for 2 hours from 4-6pm PDT, but the realm itself will be available for a full day. All races and classes will be available, but the max level will be set to 5. Also, current beta testers will not be able to play their beta, but will have to join the new stress realm and make new characters if they want to play.
WoW: Classic is scheduled for August 27 (technically August 26 if you're in the Americas). The soonest that you can play it is starting in May, during Blizzard's scheduled stress tests. To opt-in you must have an active subscription on your Battle.net account. If you do, go to Account Management and select the Wow Classic beta. Keep in mind, there will be level caps during the test. The schedule is as follows:
Through out the game, the quest log will be capped to 20 many times. The guide makes use of maximizing the total amount of quests you can accept at once. Because of this it is important to follow the guide exactly and only accept quests if the guide tells you to so you won't run into issues not being able to accept a quest. If you do accept a quest that is not listed in the guide, write it down because you may need to abandon it in order to keep following the guide if your quest log is full.